Tag: buddhism

There is no promise of love and light or visions of any kind–no angels, no devils. Nothing happens: it is absolutely boring. Sometimes you feel silly. One often asks the question: “Who is kidding whom? Am I on to something or not?” You are not on to something. Travelling the path means you get off everything, there is no place to perch. Sit and feel your breath, be with it. Then you begin to realize that actually the slitting of the artery did not take place when you were introduced to the practice. The actual slitting takes place when you begin to feel the boredom of the practice–real boredom. “I’m supposed to get something out of Buddhism and meditation. I’m supposed to attain different levels of realization. I haven’t. I’m bored stiff.” Even your watcher is unsympathetic to you, begins to mock you. Boredom is important because boredom is anti-credential. Credentials are entertaining, always bringing you something new, something lively, something fantastic, all kinds of solutions. When you take away the idea of credentials, then there is boredom. (53)

From yesterday’s reading, a few lines on anti-credential and boredom, related are concerns for non-aggression, for what discourse brings or fails to bring to sadhana’s privacy, elsewhere Trungpa noting that practice needs only the earth as its witness. Boredom here instates non-magical thinking, reduces expectations, appeases the incommunicability of source work. Consider with this, the credential-pursuing verification expressions for writing in parallel, socializing about writing goals, about writing discipline and ritual, several days in a row, timed sessions, testimonials about doing the work, when really there is no promise of light and love or visions of any kind in writing, also.